Eventually her class is allowed in! There's six people in the class and they all seem pretty exuberant people in it, aqshy's nature making itself known. Apparently casting spells relies mostly on constructing the correct shape and mental state, though you can cheat and shortcut by using material components and hand gestures to 'lock down' certain portions of the spell. There's a fair bit of notation and structure to learn about even the simplest aqshy spell, Fireball, but Liath finds herself grasping it instinctively, and even getting bored by the time class finishes.

Cantrips class is similar, except the magic is even simpler and she could probably actually cast, say, Move, going by the practical exercises earlier, without any real risk.

She has a decent idea of just how volatile handling aqshy can be now; she doesn't take the risk. She's glad she has some lighter classes in her schedule after Basic Sword and Control Exercises.

She checks her schedule. Is this her supper break now?

Basic Tactics and Finance & Planning for Novice Adventurers are still to come, then a late dinner break, then another round of Control Exercises.

So she doesn't eat dinner till eight or so. Alright, she's a queen, she can manage. 

Basic Tactics seems like it ought to be an easy class, and Finance and Planning she has some background on. She can make it to dinner. And then another round of Control Exercises. Ugh. At least she'll be fresh(ish) after supper.

Basic Tactics isn't too hard! But the paradigm of Skills and magical arms and armor lead to a very different fighting style than anything involving automatic weapons and artillery. It's all new information.

(Though guns do seem to exist here, machine guns don't. And magical armor means they're not as oppressive a weapon as back home anyway.)

Finance and Planning is... Fairly easy actually, it goes over what kinds of expenses and revenue most adventurers can expect. The Guild charges pretty steep fees on all dungeon-diving. There are graphs of average delving depth and time return on investment versus risk of injury and death. It also only lasts two weeks, meeting just twice a week.

She takes note in her mental journal of where "artillery mage" seems to fit in the current scheme.

Finance and Planning bores her. But if she's only going to be subjected to four classes of this she can deal with it. It does give her a little more information on how adventuring careers work, and that's worth paying for. 

She goes to supper, stuffs her face (in a ladylike fashion), and shows up to Control Exercises psyched up and as ready as she's going to be this late in the day. She's going to need to use this when she's fatigued. Roll with it.

There's a note scrawled on paper and stuck to the door.

Do not enter - Laughing Flames inside. Class cancelled. Go to room 401 to meet M. Doubach for reschedule. Full refunds + 4c refundable to all studen accounts.

She exhales. 

Alright, let's do that then. And get her refund, she is not made of money.

M. Doubach is another Bright professor. She's apologetic, but well, these things do happen and they don't have an infinite number of warded practice rooms. The refund goes straight to her student account and after she glances over her schedule says that there isn't really any room in it to reschedule and it may be best to simply call today's session a wash.

She nods, tiredly. "Alright, thank you. I'll go put the time to use, in any case."

Let's see if she can track down Ancilla while she has some spare time. Control Exercises is a nice long block to go looking in.

With enough asking around she can hear things about this person!

"Ancilla Whitetail? She spends a lot of time on hobby clubs and student associations and fundraisers for charity, especially the Architecture Club."

"She's so great! She sponsored our historical society, you know, we're working to reconstruct artifacts from the 2nd Missilid War and rediscover lost cultural context and..."

"The Rabbit Princess? Just another rich kid living it up in college in my opinion. Has her own townhouse just a few blocks away and everything."

"Oh, Ancilla? I know her actually. But lots of people want to talk to her, so she has to pick somehow. She picks interesting people. Are you interesting?"

"Juat a spoilt rich kid learning to throw fireballs for a living," she deadpans. "There are probably ten of me in this university. Probably less when you only count the ones doing twelve hour class days."

The girl who says she knows Ancilla chuckles and taps her chin thoughtfully. "I'll pass it on. You'll get what you want one way or another if aqshy's any pattern, though. Maybe join the architecture club." And with a dismissive wave, she walks off.

Ugh.

She positively simmers at that dismissive wave. 

But if the Architecture Club is a good lead it's probably worth it. 

But when does it meet? 

She can look that up later; right now she has... Dungeon Jargon. Alright.

Dungeon Jargon is actually a single-meeting-only class. She has it once, and never again.

The common layout of a dungeon diving party is thus- Monster types can generally be divided into spacing/rushdown/projectile/grappler, in terms of how they attack. The general threat rankings go from E to A, then S, SS, and SSR. But most people will never see anything even so high as A rank. Dungeons somehow maintain certain levels of the Winds of Magic within them, but not infinite amounts - this is its level of "juice". 'Baiting the dungeon' is basically anything that makes the fights seem too easy, or acting too confident. It's generally considered a bad idea. Watch out for mimics!

So efficient casting matters as well. Got it. 

After that, she's free. And it's late. What's the time her last class lets out again?

9:30 PM.

Yeah she's going to head back to her room and take a shower and crash.

The forthcoming week proceeds as inevitably as time itself. She learns to cast cantrips. She learns to cast Fireball at the very end of the week, and is regarded as quite talented by her teachers. Some of her acquaintances seem to regard her as standoffish but impressive due to the very heavy workload.

She's done this before. Never subjected herself to it deliberately, but this grind of necessary work is no stranger to her. She gets up, she spars, she showers before lunch, she eats, she does her control exercises, she listens to her theory classes, she eats late, she does a second round of control exercises. She half-dozes through her last evening class and falls into bed afterwards. 

It's not all bad. She's learning magic. Some of the afternoon and evening classes are quite light. She's losing weight from all the sparring and her two-meals-a-day diet, and her Levels in sparring have brought her a kind of physical confidence she had only had in the bedroom before.

She's still miserable. She coils it up inside herself and stores it as resentment. She has it under control. It's only been a week, after all. 

Some of her acquaintances stop talking to her, as she steadily acquires the reputation of an ice-cold workaholic. The Winds of Magic class goes over the mysterious forces of Light and Dark, broadly associated to Selflessness and Selfishness, and other common forms of magical energy that are not the eight classical Winds.

Flaming Sword of Rhuin is an interesting spell. It conjures the item in its name, ephemeral and weightless but quite intimidating and deadly-looking, and perfectly able to slice a straw dummy in two while also setting it ablaze. The first cast of a new spell is always the most dangerous, as even to an iron-willed sorceress the Winds are capricious and whimsical, but she successfully aborts the magic the first time it threatens to tear free of her grasp, and it works on the second.

Oh, yes. This? This is what she meant by "reclaiming her birthright."

(And now she doesn't have to buy a sword!)

Her theory classes have much to teach her on the Winds' tendencies and structures, and common mistakes to avoid when casting. Her schedule has to be adjusted slightly due to how quickly she's advancing. The student advisor wonders whether she wants to slow down any? She's burning through theory, too, and placed in a higher level swordfighting class, and more of her time now spent on those exhausting control exercises with less on theory.

The next spell on the list is Hearts Afire. Far more metaphorical an application of magic than before, but aqshy is nothing if not passion, and it will empower her and her allies with courage and fighting spirit, as well as potent resistance against fear and terror effects, of which there are a considerable number. The problem is, the structure of magic must hang upon her very breast and radiate outward from there, without being disturbed by the roiling fire that builds within as she casts. This proves... Problematic. It takes two extra practice sessions above and beyond the ones she has daily to finally nail down, and multiple times there is nearly a conflagration within her, saved only by hastily expelling the Winds and creating a few new scorch marks.

It's been three weeks, and her focus has been suffering under accumulated background resentment. She masters it in the end, though her extra practice sessions cut into her sleep. She makes up some of it by eating quickly in her food breaks and snatching naps before her control exercises. 

She wants to hurt someone.

Her professors are mostly happy to keep supervising and teaching her as she presses ever onward, despite her clear strain.

The Aqshy's Aegis would be the final tool in her basic sorcerous toolkit: A defense. A shield of flame made solid, able to block blows and harm that which dared to attack her.

...Maybe it's her increasing strain and distraction, her desire to hurt at odds with the purpose of protection. Maybe it would have happened anyway as a sheer matter of luck. Regardless, the first time she casts the Aegis for real - it all goes horribly wrong.

Instead of forming the fifteen beautiful strands that together project a smooth shell, the magic tangles inside her. Her professor's eyes widen and he reaches out to grab at her sternum where the energy is twisting, turning into a vortex, but it's too late already, as aqshy does what it always wants to do - and becomes fire.

Her insides are on fire. For four long seconds until the professor grasps the errant energy and tears it free, straight into the ceiling, she burns.

Even once the miscast is removed, the damage remains. It is... Excruciating. She can't move. She can't breathe. Her windsight is full of pain.

She doesn't black out until the professor starts performing CPR. Then, she wakes up in a hospital room.